Asia Programs

Asia Programs at the Arnold Arboretum

The forests of Asia are among Earth’s most threatened ecosystems. The Arnold Arboretum is committed to understanding and preserving the biodiversity of these forests, via research, capacity building, and informatics support. The Arboretum has worked at the forefront of plant biology research in East and Southeast Asia for many decades. Today our researchers are active in the core fields of plant species discovery, biogeography, forest ecology, and climate change. Educational activities supported by the Arboretum have changed the lives and advanced the careers of Harvard students and young Asian researchers alike, from the 1920s to the present.

120 Years of the Arnold Arboretum in Asia

Today’s research and education activities in Asia stand on a foundation of scientific and human resources built over twelve decades.

Sargent commissions Joseph Rock to collect for the Arboretum in China and Tibet (1924). The three-year expedition garnered more than 20,000 herbarium specimens, several hundred packets of seeds, and 653 photographs.

Shiu Ying Hu collected for the Arboretum from 1939-1940, becoming the first female plant collector to brave the bandit-infested Chinese frontier.

Seeds of Metasequoia glyptostroboides (dawn redwood), first collected by Chinese botanists in 1947, were distributed by the Arboretum to botanical gardens around the world in 1948.

Chinese botanists published the first volume of a national flora, Flora Reipublicae Popularis Sinicae (FRPS), in 1959. Though additional volumes were initially slow to appear, rapid progess after 1977 enabled the FRPS to be completed in 2004.

Tropical Asian research and training

In 1977, Peter Stevens, a Clusiaceae and Ericaceae expert with extensive field experience in New Guinea, became Assistant Professor of Biology at Harvard and Associate Curator of the Arnold Arboretum.

In 1978, Peter Ashton became director of the Arnold Arboretum. A Dipterocarpaceae expert with years of expeditionary experience in Southeast Asia, Ashton expands the Arboretum’s field and herbarium activities in Asia.

Robert Cook became director in 1989, continuing the Arboretum’s extensive commitment to activities in Asia.

John Burley and Jim Jarvie began Indonesian collecting and capacity building in the early 1990s. Burley discovered the anti-AIDS properties of Calophyllum lanigerum var. austrocoriaceum (Powell, 1999).

Integrative Asian botany

As political and cultural realities have changed in the last decade, so has the nature of the Arboretum’s work in Asia. Research is now heavily field-based, and staff prioritize the building of long-term, collaborative partnerships with national institutions and scientists. Believing that “the partnership is the platform,” the Arboretum strives for meaningful co-authorship of projects and publications.

In 2004, Stuart Davies became director of the Center for Tropical Forest Science. With major support from the Arnold Arboretum, CTFS moved its headquarters to Harvard University until 2012.

After serving as a Mercer Fellow in the late 1990s, Campbell Webb became a staff research scientist based in Indonesia. For details on his current research (with co-PI Sarah Mathews, please visit the project website. Field activities are also covered live in an Arnold Arboretum blog.

Curator of Living Collections Michael Dosmann joined a NACPEC collecting expedition in China in 2010.

Ned Friedman became director in 2011, reaffirming the Arboretum’s commitment to the Asian research program.

The Shiu-Ying Hu Student/Postdoctoral Exchange Award was established in 2013. The Hu Award supports research projects the involve the exchange of students and postdoctoral researchers between the People’s Republic of China and Harvard University.